The False Gospel of Russell’s “Law and Order” ICE Narrative
USA Today has nearly no standards
Nicole Russell’s USA Today column from Jan 8, praising ICE agents for “restoring law and order” in Minneapolis deserves the thorough fact-checking and pushback that her piece so clearly lacks. The rhetorical gymnastics required to frame a federal immigration operation as a restoration of order in a city that already had functioning law enforcement institutions would be impressive if they were not so dangerous.
Russell commits her first error in the opening paragraph by implying that Minneapolis descended into some kind of anarchic chaos requiring federal intervention. This framing is not just incorrect, it inverts reality. Minneapolis had police. It had courts. It had the entire apparatus of local and state law enforcement functioning before approximately 2,000 ICE agents descended on the city (Russell, 2026). The suggestion that “law and order” was absent until federal immigration officers arrived suggests either a fundamental misunderstanding of what those words mean or a deliberate attempt to recast immigration enforcement as something it is not.
The comparison Russell draws between this incident and the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder requires careful examination because she gets it wrong in ways that reveal the poverty of her thinking. Floyd was killed by a Minneapolis police officer, Derek Chauvin, during what should have been a routine arrest for an alleged non-violent offense. The context was community policing, a system where officers interact with residents in their daily lives, where accountability mechanisms exist through local oversight, and where the relationship between police and community is supposed to be collaborative even when tense (ABC News, 2023). The ICE operation in Minneapolis represents something fundamentally different. These are federal agents operating outside the local community relationships that even flawed local police forces must navigate. They arrive with a singular mission detached from community welfare, and they operate under different training standards and accountability structures.
The most damning evidence against Russell’s framing comes from the training documents ICE agents actually receive. Type Investigations obtained hundreds of pages of previously unreported ICE training materials and found something troubling: the documents “do not address how to de-escalate tense or dangerous situations and avoid the use of force” (Hassan, 2024). To the contrary, some lessons appeared to encourage agents to “use force quickly and decisively.” One training document explicitly states that it is a myth that deadly force can only be used as a last resort. “Objective reasonableness is the law; not policy,” the document reads. “Using the minimal force, exhausting all lesser means of force, or always giving a warning could create an unnecessary risk for the officer” (Hassan, 2024).
This training philosophy stands in stark contrast to the standards followed by many domestic police departments. The Police Executive Research Forum, an independent research organization focused on policing issues, found that agencies implementing de-escalation training like the Integrated Communications, Assessment and Tactics program saw a 28% reduction in use-of-force incidents and 36% fewer injuries to officers (ABC News, 2023). ICE agents, according to their own training materials, are explicitly taught that they do not need to exhaust alternative means before employing deadly force.
The claims about ICE agent qualifications warrant scrutiny as well. Russell treats ICE officers as if they were equivalent to experienced law enforcement professionals, but the reality documented by NBC News and The Atlantic tells a different story. NBC News reported that ICE has placed recruits into training before completing the agency’s vetting process. Officials told NBC News that some recruits failed drug testing, have disqualifying criminal backgrounds, or do not meet physical or academic requirements (Ainsley & Martinez, 2025). Nearly half of new recruits who arrived for training at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center over a three-month period were later sent home because they could not pass the written exam (Ainsley & Martinez, 2025).
The Atlantic reported that more than a third of recruits at ICE’s training academy are failing the personal fitness test, which requires only 15 push-ups, 32 sit-ups, and a 1.5-mile run in 14 minutes (Miroff, 2025). One career ICE official called the situation “pathetic,” noting that before the current hiring surge, a typical class of 40 recruits had only a couple who failed because the screening process was more rigorous. Training has been shortened from roughly four months to eight weeks (Miroff, 2025).
These are not the markers of a professional law enforcement agency operating at the height of its capabilities. They are the markers of an agency racing to meet staffing goals while lowering standards in ways that inevitably affect judgment and performance in the field.
Russell’s argument also obscures the fundamental nature of immigration enforcement itself. The right to determine immigration status is a federal prerogative, yes, but the manner of enforcement is a policy choice, not a natural law. When Russell writes that ICE agents “are enforcing existing immigration law” as though this settles the moral and political question, she commits the is-ought fallacy. The fact that something is legal does not make it right, proper, or just. Immigration law has been used historically to justify unconscionable treatment, and the current enforcement regime is no exception.
The suggestion that Renee Nicole Good “interfered with federal law enforcement operations” and therefore bears responsibility for her own death requires us to accept a proportionality argument that should give anyone pause. A woman in a vehicle, whose precise mental state we cannot know, allegedly attempted to drive through a group of ICE agents, and the response was fatal gunfire. No attempt to move out of the way. No use of less lethal options. No de-escalation. The training materials suggest this outcome was not an aberration but the logical extension of how these agents are taught to think about force.
The geographic proximity to where George Floyd was killed does not, as Russell implies, create a continuity of context. It creates a contrast. Minneapolis learned, at enormous cost, that officers must be held accountable for disproportionate force. The same standard must apply regardless of whether the badge reads “Police” or “ICE.”
What Russell calls “law and order” is better understood as a particular vision of power enforcement without accountability, of force deployed quickly and decisively against people who have been administratively marked for removal from the country. That vision may appeal to some, but let us at least be honest about what it is. It is not a restoration of order. It is an imposition of a particular order, one that treats human life as subordinate to enforcement metrics.
The path forward is not, as Russell suggests, for Minnesota Democrats to “support these efforts.” It is for Minnesota, and the country, to demand better. Peaceful protest. Legal challenges. Voting. And most fundamentally, refusing to accept the framing that equates aggressive immigration enforcement with law and order.
Russell’s crocodile tears for Renee Nicole Good are followed by paragraphs defending the officer who shot her. This is not analysis. It is advocacy dressed up as even-handedness. USA Today should expect more from its opinion writers.
If you have a strong stomach, and a high tolerance for ‘wrong’ you can read Russell’s propaganda here: https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/columnist/2026/01/08/ice-agent-minneapolis-shooting-enforce-law/88084377007/
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Works Cited
Ainsley, J., & Martinez, D. (2025, October 22). Some new ICE recruits have shown up to training without full vetting. *NBC News*. https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/immigration/new-ice-recruits-showed-training-full-vetting-rcna238739
ABC News. (2023, February 15). Why police training in the US falls short compared to the rest of the world. *ABC News*. https://abcnews.go.com/US/police-training-us-falls-short-compared-rest-world/story?id=96729748
Hassan, L. (2024, August 12). Exclusive ICE training documents encourage quick, decisive use of deadly force, say little about de-escalation. *Type Investigations*. https://www.typeinvestigations.org/investigation/2024/08/12/ice-agents-training-use-of-force/
Miroff, N. (2025, October 20). ICE’s ‘Athletically Allergic’ Recruits. *The Atlantic*. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2025/10/ice-recruits-fitness-test-trump/684625/
Russell, N. (2026, January 8). Minnesota shooting was preventable. Let ICE do their job. *USA TODAY*. https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/columnist/2026/01/08/ice-agent-minneapolis-shooting-enforce-law/88084377007/